


Are We Losing Sight?

by ifallonblackdays_fics



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 16:50:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13171113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifallonblackdays_fics/pseuds/ifallonblackdays_fics
Summary: Set three weeks after 2x20. Alec is still careful around Magnus. Magnus takes notice.





	Are We Losing Sight?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Malec Secret Santa Gift Exchange on Tumblr, and specifically for @floweralec, who requested angsty and fluffy Malec. Now that all the gifts have been uncovered and divulged, I can add this little ficlet to my AO3 archive. :)

_“when it’s late at night_

_you’re all alone_

_you’re not feeling right_

_can you see the lights?_

_are we losing sight?”  
_  
— _Cologne_ , Haux

* * *

  
Alec is still careful. He moves around the loft like he has no right to cross its threshold. He moves around their relationship on tiptoes, like he’s walking on glass shards. He touches Magnus like he’s asking permission—permission to kiss him, permission to love him. He doesn’t stay over unless Magnus expressly invites him. He doesn’t reach out unless Magnus does it first. He thinks Magnus doesn’t notice, but he’s wrong.

Magnus notices it all. He sees the hesitancy, the fear with which Alec moves, like he might break something if he’s not careful enough, restrained enough. It’s like somewhere along the line, Alec has convinced himself that he’s just too clumsy to be trusted with Magnus’ heart.

Magnus wants to tell him he’s wrong. He wants to tell Alec his hands are capable and Magnus would entrust _everything_ to them—his heart and his soul and his lungs and the very air he breathes. But he doesn’t tell him. Instead, he leaves Alec be for a while. He tells himself they just need a moment to readjust, that it’s just the aftermath of everything taking its toll—the breakup and the heartache and the war. He tells himself everything will click back into place soon enough.

But when he wakes up one night to an empty bed and finds Alec lacing up his boots on the chair in the entryway, as if he has no right to do it anywhere else, Magnus decides he’s had enough.

“Alexander,” he calls, and even though he speaks softly, his voice echoes as loud as gunfire in the too-quiet apartment. “What are you doing?”

Alec looks up for a fraction of a second before he brings his gaze back down. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his voice is too rough. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Magnus frowns. There’s a shift, a thickening in the tension that’s been inhabiting Alec’s body over the past few weeks. Now more than ever, Magnus feels like he’s being kept at arm’s length.

“You didn’t wake me.” _‘Your absence did,’_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. “What’s going on? Is there an emergency at the Institute?”

“No.” Alec hesitates ever so briefly before he answers, as though he might consider lying. “I just…need to take a walk.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” Magnus says, pointedly.

“I’m aware, Magnus,” Alec replies, and he sounds tired. Exhausted, even.

Magnus takes a few steps closer, and only then does he notice the details—the dark circles under Alec’s eyes, the fine layer of perspiration on his skin, how pale he looks. The faint tremor in his body when he finally stands up from the chair.

Alarm bells are going off like crazy in Magnus’ head. Something is very, _very_ wrong.

“Alexander.” He covers the distance between them and gently grasps Alec’s elbow. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just…” Alec trails off like he doesn’t even know what to say.

Magnus studies his face closely and doesn’t like what he sees. “You’re exhausted. And you’re shaking.” He lifts a hand and touches his open palm to Alec’s cheek. The relief he feels when Alec instinctively leans into his touch is almost overwhelming. “Alexander, I love you,” Magnus says, and he has never said it like this, like their lives depend on it. “Talk to me.”

Alec stares at him with a mixture of pain and hope, like he can finally see a way out but doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

Luckily, Magnus does. He’s been lost and in pain enough to know _exactly_ what to do. He takes Alec’s wrist and tugs gently. “Come sit down.” He doesn’t fail to notice the way Alec stumbles as he complies.

He doesn’t let go of Alec’s hand once they are sitting on the couch. Instead, he entwines their fingers together, pleased when Alec lets him.

“You want to tell me what’s happening?” he asks, not unkindly, after a moment of surprisingly companionable silence. “Have I done something wrong?”

“What?” Alec blinks like he’s completely taken aback. “No, of course not.”

Magnus sighs. “Alexander,” he says, patiently, “you’ve been keeping me at a distance. You walk on eggshells around me. You’ve slept here a total of three times since we got back together—yes, I’ve been counting,” he says when Alec’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Now I find you trying to sneak out of my apartment in the middle of the night. And to top it all off, you look like you haven’t slept in weeks.” Magnus stares hard into Alec’s tired eyes. It occurs to him that he has no idea what Alec’s nights at the Institute have been like. “ _Have_ you been sleeping?”

Alec shifts his weight on the couch, looking even more uncomfortable all of a sudden. “Not well,” he finally admits.

Magnus frowns. “When’s the last time you got a whole night’s sleep?”

Alec shrugs, and Magnus knows then that it’s been too long.

“Alexander—”

“I _can’t_ sleep,” Alec snaps, pulling his hand away to rake his fingers nervously through his hair. “Okay? I can’t. I’ve tried, and I _can’t_.”

Magnus’ stomach knots up at record speed. “Why not?”

“Because every time I close my eyes, I feel it all over again.”

Magnus is afraid to ask, but he knows he has to; Alec is drowning in front of him, and it’s up to him to pull him out. “What, Alexander?” he prompts gently.

Alec swallows convulsively, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously up and down his throat. “The bond. I feel the bond break over and over again.”

Magnus freezes. He cannot even begin to comprehend the complexity of a _parabatai_ bond, but he remembers Alec’s searing anguish at the breaking of it as if it were his own. It has stayed under Magnus’ skin ever since.

“I can’t get it out of my head, Magnus,” Alec says, quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “I close my eyes and all the agony is right there.”

“How long?” Magnus asks, just as quietly.

“Since it happened.”

Three weeks. Three weeks have passed since Alec collapsed in the ops room at the Institute, writhing in pain as his _parabatai_ was mortally wounded. Three weeks since Jace reappeared without a scratch. Three weeks since Valentine was defeated.

Three weeks that Alec has spent stuck in a nightmare.

Magnus feels like all the blood has frozen in his veins. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

Alec looks away, down at his lap. He looks remote and isolated. Magnus is reminded of the closed-off, pained young man he first met, and it breaks his heart.

“I just got you back,” Alec murmurs. “I don’t…I don’t want to lose you again.”

Magnus tries to ignore the searing pain that hits him. Alec’s anguish is a palpable, living thing, a third presence in Magnus’ living room. “Why would you lose me?”

Alec shrugs like it doesn’t matter. Like his pain doesn’t matter—or like it matters too much. Like it’s just too heavy, too intense to talk about.

“I’m just terrified,” he admits, so quietly that Magnus barely hears him. “I’m scared I’ll make another mistake that will drive you away. And I didn’t…I didn’t want to add to the strain.”

If Magnus thought his heart broke before, it now shatters into a million pieces. “Oh, Alexander,” he breathes. Unable to bear the distance any longer, he reaches out and places a hand on Alec’s nape, and he tugs, ever so slightly.

The reaction is immediate. Alec turns into him, leaning into him like he no longer knows how to keep himself up.

Magnus cups Alec’s cheek with his other hand and stares deep into his eyes. “I love you,” he says, quietly but fiercely, so that his words will really reach Alec. “I’m not going anywhere. I miss you, Alexander. Come back to me.”

It’s like magic. Magnus’ words seem to both break and heal—they break the last of Alec’s walls, smash down the last of the distance between them, and they heal the strain, the tension. The lingering fear.

Alec takes a firm hold of Magnus’ hips and pulls him impossibly closer, and he crashes their mouths together like he wants to forget how to breathe…or like he wants to remember. He steals Magnus’ oxygen for himself, and Magnus lets him, puts everything he has into his lips and tongue and gives it to Alexander to keep.

It takes them a while to finally re-emerge. When they do, Alec’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes are bright with tears and _something_ else, the fire of a man who has found his place again. He leans his forehead against Magnus’ and closes his eyes, breathing heavily.

Magnus reaches up and runs his fingers slowly through Alec’s dark hair. “Let’s get you back to bed,” he whispers.

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. I’m right here.”

Alec swallows and nods. He pulls back slowly and lets Magnus pull him to his feet and toward the bedroom.

Five minutes later, the apartment is dark and quiet once more, but the silence is no longer stifling.

“I’m sorry,” Alec whispers in the darkness, his head pillowed on Magnus’ shoulder. “I’m sorry I lost sight of us.”

“It’s okay, Alexander,” Magnus says, running his fingertips over the bare skin of Alec’s forearm. “So have I, before. But we always get it back. Remember?”

_“We always seem to find our way back to each other.”_

He feels Alec smile against his neck. “I remember.”

“I need you to get some rest,” Magnus whispers.

Alec nods and settles against Magnus’ body, and he lets out a long sigh as he allows the exhaustion to take him away.

Magnus’ cat eyes are on full display as he stares up at the darkened ceiling. Being half demon may make him an abomination, but what most people don’t know is, demons are really good at keeping watch. And Magnus is determined to guard Alec’s sleep with his whole nature, whatever that may mean. Alec’s demons have just found a more powerful one, one that will not lose sight of them.

 

**END**


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